Waveform Dev Update/Look to the Future

[ZeePok]

We'll be supporting Waveform 8 as both 32 & 64-bit versions for at least a year or two as our OEM partners distribute that.

For the people still on 32-bit OSes, can I ask why? As far as I can tell, (and rosesbyrosex confirms my hunches) almost all CPUs have had 64-bit instruction sets since ~2004 with the second issue of the Pentium 4. Waveform is certainly not designed for systems that old and we can't support them even if we did continue 32-bit support.

Is there any reason for having a 32-bit OS? Is it just that your machines came with them and you've not upgraded since? I know Vista and perhaps 7 sometimes shipped in 32-bit OEM forms but I'm fairly sure any OS in the last 5 years would have been 64-bit only.

I can't think of any reason for using a 32-bit OS if you have a choice...

Why? Why not! I don't see the point of getting into the trouble reinstalling Windows to 64-bit when my computer only has 4 Gb max. I'm perfectly happy with how it runs now

And @roses.. I'm only using legitimate software, thank you very much!

[dRowAudio]

I may not have explained that very well. What I meant is that I completely understand if people have purchased computers that came with 4GB of RAM and a 32-bit OS years ago.

I just wondered if people were still choosing 32-bit options and if so, what are the reasons.

Can I ask when you bought your computer? I'm just trying to get an idea of how old these 32-bit systems are.

[ZeePok]

 
@dRowAudio
Is there a point to this or is it already set in stone that there will be no 'Waveform 9' 32-bit version?
If that's the case then better to stop a useless exercise (and for me to write off Tracktion/Waveform for good ... )

[chico.co.uk]

 
@dRowAudio
Is there a point to this or is it already set in stone that there will be no 'Waveform 9' 32-bit version?
If that's the case then better to stop a useless exercise (and for me to write off Tracktion/Waveform for good ... )

This is daft. If TSC wanted to definitely drop 32-bit support, they could just say that, and live with the fallout. They're literally asking you about your setup, because you're keen on sticking with it, and they want to know why.

Fair play if you don't want to explain the thinking, but don't then blame others for not getting involved in the decision.

[rosesbyrosex]

Why? Why not! I don't see the point of getting into the trouble reinstalling Windows to 64-bit when my computer only has 4 Gb max. I'm perfectly happy with how it runs now

And @roses.. I'm only using legitimate software, thank you very much!

What @dRowAudio is asking: why choosing 32 bit when you can choose 64 bits and all it's advantages?, on 64 bit you can run 32/64 bit aplicacions, but on a 32 bit os you can only run 32 bit aplications, also 64 bit is an updated revision of the x86 32bit instruction set and is better in some processes because it uses 64-bit memory addresses.

64 bit has far more advantages tan 32 bits

So as i said

Now if you wonder about the type of 32 bit users.

2.Users with a 64 bit CPU and 32 bit OS, they don't care about using a legacy OS architecture 32 bit when it's posible to use 64 bit OS, so they don't care about using legacy software as long as it still work, they may be using windows vista or even xp, they may have trackion version 4 or 5, so they won't care about updating to waveform 8 or 9, so who cares about them.

if you don´t care about about having a better OS (64-bit), why do you want to have a better DAW (Waveform 9)?

[Peter Widdicombe]

VSTSoundfont has both 32 and 64, and sounds pretty much like the SFZ did, so that's OK.

The only ones I would truly miss are the SQ8L SQ80/ESQ-1 emulator; and ORGANized B3. I think I can find equivalents to pretty much everything else...

[madrang]

A private beta to active member of the forum makes sense.
I don't care about leaving analytics enabled...
I'm on Ubuntu, what 32bit support ??

Also, might be worth looking at adding Waveform to Steam/Audio production as out of the box it would work on all supported OS by Steam(Windows, Mac, Linux) and all SteamOS Machines as they are based on Ubuntu(and Ubuntu is at the moment the recommended testing platform by them).

http://store.steampowered.com/tag/en/Au ... roduction/

At the moment there are no DAW on Steam that runs on Linux/SteamOS and personally i would pay a little more to have automatic updating, crash reporting and knowing that my license is link to my account forever(been on there for more than 10 years) and now that more games are made on Linux, we NEED something to make soundtracks for those games. So why not give it a shot ? They do not restrict to having your own online store. But you can't include a competing store in a distributed product thru Steam(to sell DLC or Plugins from the app if downloaded from them).

http://steamcommunity.com/id/madrang/
Steam Concurrent Users: http://store.steampowered.com/stats
Hardware Distribution: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

[kejkz]

Have to say that I personally stopped purchasing updates to Tracktion / Waveform after Tracktion version 5 years ago. I always try new version, just to check if anything improved, but it's still the same... Tracktion is always unstable for me (macOS, any version), doesn't matter which version I try. What I always am seeking in any audio software is stability first, everything else second, because I want to get lost in making music, and unfortunately Traction wasn't giving me that experience since version 2 on Windows. I have some songs that I'll eventually complete in it, but until the app is 150% crash proof, I won't touch it for anything serious. In the meantime, I've tried a lot of other regular daws, and all of them were much much better in that regard.

Other Issue I found completely unacceptable is general compatibility between version. You seem to always break something in between versions regarding compatibility of the saved states of plugins. For example, I've made a short song in version 5 that I've then opened in version 6, and the sound of one of the plugins was different. I was amazed to find that out, and haven't heard anything similar in my life in any other software.

As for going to 64bit exclusive, I think that makes a lot of sense, and I'm only using 64bit version of Tracktion for stability sake from the day 1 (or day 2, when I saw that the 32bit version is unusable with swarm of plugins I've piled through the years)

Other reason why I've stopped upgrading is actually the upgrade process itself, because if I try version 8.0, for example, I actually don't expect that anything will be fixed or that any major changes will be made until next version, since you'll always try to make some insignificant fixes in meantime, while working on next version, and that was from the case from Tracktion 4 I've originally bought when company made a comeback. And that was true for all this time.

Thanks for the explanation and announcement, I really hope you'll continue to grow as a company, and I wish you all the best in that regard. I hope that some of the newer version will make me want to upgrade now my ancient Tracktion version 5.

[Uhotug]

One of Tracktion strong sides was care about "low end". Dropping 32bit support cut that advantage (Win 10 32bit still exists).

Are you personally running Windows 10 32 bit?

I have 3 computers at home which run Win (1x8, 2x10) 32 bit.

When someone has no "real studio", I mean no 2 sound separated rooms, computer noise is a general problem. That is why in case I want "clean" sound from condenser, I prefer old notebook since it is silent (as long as CPU is not intensively used).
I must admit that I still have not installed Waveform there, but I had such a plan. On my other (slow) computer, Waveform shows better performance compare to my current setup. I guess I should forget about that idea now.

Cheap tablets produce zero noise and can record several tracks. May be in 2 years all of them have 8GB RAM, but that is not yet the case. 64bit programs consume more RAM for the same tasks (and so also slower), no longer important on "hi end" hardware, but still significant on "low end".

As a programmer, I do not really understand why additional 32bit compilation can add significant effort in the development. 16->32bits transition was a different story.

[ZeePok]

One of Tracktion strong sides was care about "low end". Dropping 32bit support cut that advantage (Win 10 32bit still exists).

Are you personally running Windows 10 32 bit?

I have 3 computers at home which run Win (1x8, 2x10) 32 bit.

When someone has no "real studio", I mean no 2 sound separated rooms, computer noise is a general problem. That is why in case I want "clean" sound from condenser, I prefer old notebook since it is silent (as long as CPU is not intensively used).
I must admit that I still have not installed Waveform there, but I had such a plan. On my other (slow) computer, Waveform shows better performance compare to my current setup. I guess I should forget about that idea now.

Cheap tablets produce zero noise and can record several tracks. May be in 2 years all of them have 8GB RAM, but that is not yet the case. 64bit programs consume more RAM for the same tasks (and so also slower), no longer important on "hi end" hardware, but still significant on "low end".

As a programmer, I do not really understand why additional 32bit compilation can add significant effort in the development. 16->32bits transition was a different story.

 
^^^ This! ^^^

Fully agree! There's really no need for 64-bit when you're not using sample based instruments, just regular plugins.

My computer is from 2006 Q4. It came with 1 Gb RAM, so there was no need for 64-bit. I expanded to 4 Gb, but I still don't see the need for 64-bit! Don't need the hassle of a reinstall when all is working fine!

[jabe]

We'll be supporting Waveform 8 as both 32 & 64-bit versions for at least a year or two as our OEM partners distribute that.

For the people still on 32-bit OSes, can I ask why? As far as I can tell, (and rosesbyrosex confirms my hunches) almost all CPUs have had 64-bit instruction sets since ~2004 with the second issue of the Pentium 4. Waveform is certainly not designed for systems that old and we can't support them even if we did continue 32-bit support.

Is there any reason for having a 32-bit OS? Is it just that your machines came with them and you've not upgraded since? I know Vista and perhaps 7 sometimes shipped in 32-bit OEM forms but I'm fairly sure any OS in the last 5 years would have been 64-bit only.

I can't think of any reason for using a 32-bit OS if you have a choice...

I'll have to check this out. I thought PCs with 32-bit OSes were that way because the CPUs didn't support 64-bit OSes. Interesting.

[dRowAudio]

We'll be supporting Waveform 8 as both 32 & 64-bit versions for at least a year or two as our OEM partners distribute that.

For the people still on 32-bit OSes, can I ask why? As far as I can tell, (and rosesbyrosex confirms my hunches) almost all CPUs have had 64-bit instruction sets since ~2004 with the second issue of the Pentium 4. Waveform is certainly not designed for systems that old and we can't support them even if we did continue 32-bit support.

Is there any reason for having a 32-bit OS? Is it just that your machines came with them and you've not upgraded since? I know Vista and perhaps 7 sometimes shipped in 32-bit OEM forms but I'm fairly sure any OS in the last 5 years would have been 64-bit only.

I can't think of any reason for using a 32-bit OS if you have a choice...

I'll have to check this out. I thought PCs with 32-bit OSes were that way because the CPUs didn't support 64-bit OSes. Interesting.

I could be wrong. I'm primarily a Mac user and use Windows via VMs. The last PC I bought was about 10 years ago and that had a Pentium 4. That and the Celeron seemed to be the common CPUs at the time.
I think everything since the Core 2 has been 64-bit and the first Core 2 was released in 2006.

So I think it's a relatively safe bet to say any processor built in the last 10 years would have had a 64-bit CPU.

I think there were still a lot of OEMs shipping with 32-bit OSes though, even on chips that could support the 64-bit versions. Maybe they had less customer support issues with 32-bit versions as it simplified things for novice users? I know it still confuses me that on Windows the 64-bit system folder is called "system32" and the 32-bit system folder called "SysWoW64" (I also understand why they did this but it's not exactly a clean solution).

[dRowAudio]

As a programmer, I do not really understand why additional 32bit compilation can add significant effort in the development. 16->32bits transition was a different story.

It's not necessarily that it's more difficult to develop for 32-bit, it's more that it's time consuming to build and test. It basically doubles the amount of scenarios. (Having said that, sometimes there are differences with API availability etc. which require workarounds).

The other problem that I mentioned is that there are a lot of old 32-bit plugins lying around that really don't cut it anymore. They might have inherent problems such as not handling multiple threads very well because back in the day there was only a single audio thread. Moving to 64-bit gives us an opportunity to only support reasonably newer code that's more likely to be supported by developers and deal with common modern practices.

I know there are some of you who have old machines that don't use large sample based plugins but there are a lot of people who do. If they're using the 32-bit version and run out of memory then bad things can happen.

One other thing is that it's also a lot simpler for new users if there is only one download which only goes to one location and only deals with one set of plugins. It's easier and quicker to diagnose problems.

It seems to me that this discussion has veered towards only the people with actual 32-bit machines having an issue with it. That's good information to have. At least it shows us there are still some people with older machines around.

[bidule]

In my opinion you should release Waveform 9 as 64 bit only, keep releasing updates to Waveform 8 for both 32bit and 64bit versions during one year, and in the end of 2018 release W8 for free, as you have done with older versions. Jump from free T6 to free W8. No need to give away T7 for free.
That will give 32bit users plenty of time to adapt for Waveform 10. The users that refuse to adopt 64bit will still have W8.

[jabe]

We'll be supporting Waveform 8 as both 32 & 64-bit versions for at least a year or two as our OEM partners distribute that.

For the people still on 32-bit OSes, can I ask why? As far as I can tell, (and rosesbyrosex confirms my hunches) almost all CPUs have had 64-bit instruction sets since ~2004 with the second issue of the Pentium 4. Waveform is certainly not designed for systems that old and we can't support them even if we did continue 32-bit support.

Is there any reason for having a 32-bit OS? Is it just that your machines came with them and you've not upgraded since? I know Vista and perhaps 7 sometimes shipped in 32-bit OEM forms but I'm fairly sure any OS in the last 5 years would have been 64-bit only.

I can't think of any reason for using a 32-bit OS if you have a choice...

I'll have to check this out. I thought PCs with 32-bit OSes were that way because the CPUs didn't support 64-bit OSes. Interesting.

I could be wrong. I'm primarily a Mac user and use Windows via VMs. The last PC I bought was about 10 years ago and that had a Pentium 4. That and the Celeron seemed to be the common CPUs at the time.
I think everything since the Core 2 has been 64-bit and the first Core 2 was released in 2006.

So I think it's a relatively safe bet to say any processor built in the last 10 years would have had a 64-bit CPU.

I think there were still a lot of OEMs shipping with 32-bit OSes though, even on chips that could support the 64-bit versions. Maybe they had less customer support issues with 32-bit versions as it simplified things for novice users? I know it still confuses me that on Windows the 64-bit system folder is called "system32" and the 32-bit system folder called "SysWoW64" (I also understand why they did this but it's not exactly a clean solution).

I'll download a 64-bit live Linux distro and try it on some of my other machines. People often give me their old PCs and I may not have had a new one, other than the laptop, since 2004. I ran Piriform's Speccy on the one I use for emails to check the specs on its hardware and it might be the motherboard that's the issue on that one. I would have tried the Linux version of Tracktion if I'd known one of my PCs would take it. A lot of my old computers are for trying out things, but I do want to keep one running under Vista because my copy of Steinberg's Clean won't run on anything much newer; I've a load of vinyl to convert, and I don't intend to buy anything from Steinberg again.

I'm also a bit concerned that my interface might not work under 64-bit. It's one of the original Gina ones. I've a Mackie Spike that seems okay under 64-bit on my laptop.

I'll report back on my findings. Probably won't be for a few days.